


Angel With a Shotgun

by Soren_Tycho



Category: The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures
Genre: Angels, Christianity, Competence Kink, Deconversion, Demonic Possession, Demons, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Fallen Angels, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, High Fantasy, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Mythospunk, Oral Sex, Other, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sex, Sex Magic, Sexual Fantasy, Succubi & Incubi, Tacticool, The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures - Freeform, Threesome - F/M/M, Twins, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 16:07:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15489618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soren_Tycho/pseuds/Soren_Tycho
Summary: When Marlene prayed for help with a demon of lust she just couldn't shake, she got it--from the least expected source.





	Angel With a Shotgun

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Care and Feeding of Magical Creatures](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/401526) by Siren Tycho. 



> Note: this story contains formatting that makes it unreadable without using the Work Skin.

# Angel With a Shotgun: Cherry and the Twins

The auditorium falls suddenly silent, filled with a strange discomfort: this isn't what casting out a demon is supposed to look like. It's a bizarre thought - isn't the idea that the Spirit moves the same way every time a Catholic deception? - but it nonetheless runs through more than a few minds as the familiar figure onstage convulses at the minister's touch.

She'd asked, haltingly, when her turn for prayer came, to be freed from a spirit that tempted her night and day. A common enough trial, for people of her age, the minister assured her, and laid hands on her forehead, praying, and praying for himself not to be ensnared by the smell of lust that seemed to drip from her.

...and she'd crumpled, falling to her knees with a yelp, shying away as if he'd burned her, face a mask of pain. 

He's a faithful man, no hypocrite or charlatan, has seen miracles with his own eyes, and yet something about this feels different. Is far too real, the thought hammers at the gates of his mind even as he explains to himself and God that of course he believes these things are real. He drops to his knees, now laying hands not on her but near her as the spirit often leads in situations like this, and they both begin to pray, different words but the same cry.

"Lord--"

"Please, please, help--"

Neither finishes their prayer: the moment the word 'help' escapes her lips, blinding-bright red lines snake from beneath her prone form, smoking as they burn themselves into the boards of the stage drawing out in a split second a complicated, eldritch shape inscribed in a circle, wound about with text in some hellish language and then before anyone can register horror or any other emotion a blast rocks the auditorium, hurling the minister and worship team and everyone else within the circle's border aside, everyone but the girl at its center, and the space fills with mist or smoke that seems to burst from the lines.

It clears almost immediately, hanging about in shreds that no longer block vision but seem to roll off the winged forms that now crouch in the circle. One rises, seemingly human or at least without monstrous appendages and says something in a guttural, hard-edged language that surely must be the spoken form of the demonic words now burned into the floor, making an odd clearing gesture with its hands, and the other forms spring from where they crouch, some spreading huge wings and leaping into the air while others converge on the girl who still cowers at the center of all this.

Black feathers, white feathers, scales, something that seems to be solid fire: angel wings, but not the wings of God's messengers. Bodies armored in something darkly gleaming like black glass that burns with dark inner fire.  _Fallen_ angels, the thought runs through the crowd like spreading flame as they pull back from the fliers who, surreally, unlimber combat shotguns and fire warning shots into the ceiling, dropping shattered acoustic tile into the throng. Cowed, they quiet again but for one voice that shouts a futile, unanswered prayer of exorcism.

The fate of their victim is hidden now by a wall of spread wings, feathers and bat-wing membrane, the owners of the wings facing away presumably to watch whatever horror will now take place beyond the wall.

From within the circle of wings, an angel rises, raiment glowing, twenty feet tall, six brilliant wings spread, and speaks to them in a clear, tender, terrifying voice: "You have been told that there is a war in Heaven, and there is."

* * *

_Earlier, in another world..._

Gryphon rechecked his gear for the sixth time.

He wasn't nervous, but there wasn't a lot else to do while they waited for the dreams to line up. The scry was right there in front of them, Earth hanging like a giant inverted tit lit up with glowing clouds of regional numinosity and little sparks of liquefied causality. In the middle, a spot in the equatorward center of a big continent ("North America" by the briefing, the weird-sounding syllables making Gryphon glad he wasn't the one on Face duty for this trip) was blazing like a star: the landing zone. Stars shifted around this in triple-vision, representing the different narrative-complexes shifting across each other, maddeningly not quite lining up, resulting in his really _excellent_  state of readiness as they waited.

In front of _that_ , was the part of the scry that was actually worth paying attention to, where a cloudy scene showed the incubator in question mounting altar steps up to the center of the ritual they were watching. Ve was clear as the stars, and the rest of the scene was varyingly indefinite depending on what the scry they'd tunneled back along the seed's Vigil could see. The scry was danger-sensitive, that's what Vigils _were_ , but in this scene danger was everywhere and nowhere, lending a diffuse quality to the visualization.

Hovering at the corner of his vision when he looked at the scry was a deep-red, almost black, glow, indicating that the Vigil thought that firing on birth was basically certain. If it went black, the Vigil would fire before the seed was born, and it would have to find a new incubator.

Assuming the seed would allow the Vigil to take it. Gryphon would have safeworded his, if this had happened to him.

It was freakish to watch, because there wasn't much _to_  watch. Really foreign semiotics was one thing, but this one seemed to have  _no_  semiotics. Everything was plain, plain, plain. Empty altar, nearly-empty dais (just the altar and the celebrant), no ritual garments, plain white hall, not even any symbology except the one orthogonal-lines glyph that was being used in so many contexts it was hard to imagine it having any meaning at all. They'd explained this in the briefing, how most of the numinosity setup was in shared context, and that the words they were hearing were in a specially reformulated dialect of the dominant local language that created a ritual space and modified your consciousness to a dreamier state at the same time - during the briefing, people had asked four different versions of "that sounds like non-consensual hypnosis" before the "yes" answer got through to them.

That was what the two Sade field liturgists behind him were gabbing about as they waited, but what was getting sand up his cunt was that there seemed to be no structure by which he could guess how quickly the dreams would line up and let them through. It was maddening because people in the scry kept _doing things_ , and yet nothing was _happening._  Heartbreakingly nectar-shy humans walked up reverently in a line to the celebrant on stage, made a request or supplicated the scry or the Orgy wouldn't let them hear, spent a moment or two with the celebrant's hands on their heart or crown, and walked away, looking variously convinced that anything had happened, but nothing in the scrys seemed to move or change or indicate that these actions represented any kind of advancement in the ritual's narrative. Presumably, when the Incubator's turn came, that would change, but there wasn't any premonition of that yet.

...physical ripcord summonback token: He tugged at the length of red twine around his wrist, and the piece of ribbon that would when pulled out collapse the red twine into a proper knot tying him back home. Check.

Mental ripcord summonback token: There, potential in his mind, a poem whose last word was waiting to be read. Check.

Blessed obsidian body armor: Straps adjusted correctly, check. All closures secured, check. Consecration...the plates still smelled gloriously of Eiliina's cum, and felt warm through the padded undershirt. He could feel vim smiling at him.

...check.

Weapon correctly stowed, clipped to his chest diagonally so that it would be accessible and he could get at it even if he couldn't get up from his summoning star after landing. It was a special workup the smiths had come up with for crowd control on perfekti, a slug-thrower with multi-part consecrated slugs designed to spread when fired.

That he'd voluntarily signed up for something where they reasonably expected to need to do crowd control on _perfekti_ , well, that's how he knew he was Valkyr, right?

Extra flasks of nectar, human and succubus, clipped correctly to his vest around the weapon, sealed properly. Those  _really_  smelled like Eiliina's cum. Check.

Songrock in one ear, online with the low sweet song of the team's intercom dream, check.

Electronic backup communication unit in the other ear, online, humming with the whine of carefully-stonesung silicon. It sounded harsh, but the electricity tickled nicely, almost like quicksilver. Check.

He spared the team a further transmit check.

There were thirteen of them. Two Sade field liturgists (a human/succubus pair who had a complicated switchy power dynamic going he couldn't parse into any kind of chain of command), the Face and ver backup (an angelic-looking Sade domme with six glowing hard-light wings and luminous--it said everything about this that it was certain these people would find the appearance of a Seraphim _reassuring--_ and a smaller, kind-looking human Lilim femme dressed in a white robe), the two Sade Carer midwives, and the fire-team containing himself and six other Valkyr of various descriptions, all of them winged and able to fly well even in material-plane physics.

Amber necklace containing a lock of Eiliina's hair and a drop of ver cum, hanging around his neck, nestled between his pecs. He flexed to grip it momentarily. Check.

Binding elements for the deployment summon, still correctly applied to his hands, and, inside his boots, feet. Check.

Motion, excitement, people poising to act. In the scry, the narrative-alignment stars had shifted into a configuration that now looked like double vision, and the Incubator was mounting the altar steps. This meant vis personal narrative was lining up with that of the ritual going on around vem, which was chilling and hopeful at the same time. Ve paused, just for an instant, on the first step, everything in the scry wavered, and then the celebrant snapped into crystal clarity as the Incubator mounted the steps.

The premature-firing guess went black for an instant, and then resumed its infra-red glower, and there was absolute silence in the deployment hall. The whole operation depended on the seed's Vigil. If it fired before birth, they would catch and help the seed--if it allowed that--but not be able to extract the Incubator. If it fired _afterwards,_  whatever madness the liturgical team had done to it would reverse the pull and bring everyone in this room down to where the seed and Incubator were in a pocket of Special Time, long enough to make sure of a smooth birth and hopefully one way or another get them both someplace safe - but _that_  could only work if the three separate narratives of the Incubator's perception of what was happening, the collective imagination of the participants of the ritual ve was taking part in, and that of the Project here, lined up enough for their arrival to be plausible under all three mythologies. That they were here at all meant there was a good chance of that happening, but to pull off a conservation violation this big on a Material Plane Lost Planet everything had to be _just_  right.

Gryphon _almost_ , but didn't, jump, when the Project's celebrant's magnified voice boomed out in Formal-Eldritch dialect:

«Lie and be bound, the moment approaches.»

Marlene stood on the step, paralyzed, for hours, trying to work up the courage to climb it and go before the pastor.

He would _ask_. He would ask what was troubling her and then she would have to answer and she couldn't _lie_  and he would do that thing people always did of being dumb at exactly the wrong moment when you're trying to keep your speech pure so that she couldn't just say it was troubling her day and night or something like that.

You need to do it anyway, honey, she told herself. This is the right thing to do. 

She climbed, heart sinking because she knew she didn't _want_  to do this, not really. What did that say about her? The voices always sounded so _kind_ , when they came.

No-one seemed to notice how long she'd paused. Hadn't she been holding up the line _forever_?

Frantic activity, people lying down and positioning themselves in a hurry, sorcerers running along triggering the pre-consecrated bindings to ready them all for launch. There were two humans getting ready, too, which was an odd thing to see. This would be a rough ride for them, summoning humans like demons didn't _technically_  work. The Sade behind him had explained something he didn't understand when he'd asked how the fuck they'd gotten an exception to _that_ , but then breaking sacred rules was what being Sade was about, he supposed.

She reached the top step, and the line stopped. The person in front of the pastor now must have something really heavy on their heart, because they were going on and on.

Gryphon stretched out on the sub-pentagram he'd been standing in the middle of. It was already hot, and he could feel the gravity tickling at him ominously. He wondered again at the wisdom of binding everyone at the last minute like this, but the liturgical team said it made a good narrative wedge for the landing side, and he knew some of the fire-team was a lot more squicked at the idea of bondage than he was (he could take it or leave it, where taking it meant lying around bored until someone unbound him). Brave of them going at all, if they felt that way, but this was one of those too-important-not-to-do things, he supposed.

Then the sorcerer was above his head, murmuring and flinging incense smoke along the lines of his limbs, and he felt the gravity of the binding slither around them and line him up with the star.

The part of her that ever had payed attention in Sunday School tried in a sort of desultory way to understand this delay as god teaching her about pride and what it's really like to be on stage in front of everyone after she'd been such a prideful worship leader, but it couldn't really get to what the lesson would be.

The sorcerers all suddenly straightened, pivoted on their heels, and walked in synchronization to the edge of the huge thirteen-way summoning-star complex. They raised their robed arms, cast back their hoods, and chanted in unison in Formal Eldritch something he could half-understand about stealing the apocalypse. It droned, rose to a climax, and then they stomped and clapped once, simultaneously, and a shock went through the room. His vision darkened, blurred, he felt like he was _inside_  the scry now, like he could see shadowy legs of the people on the dais down there standing around him and the air became explosive, ready to split: the inverted Vigil was armed and ready to fire.

This was the dangerous part. They were betting from here on out that the vigil wouldn't go off pre-birth--if it did, it would be a hell of a ride as the sorcerers tried to flip things back around before the Vigil ripped everyone out of their bodies trying to summon an unborn seed but getting redirected into the reversed summoning.

The whole thing was a completely crazy idea, which made it one hundred percent Valkyr.

_I am Valkyr. The line between brave and stupid is just one step further than this._

Marlene jumped, startled from her reverie, as someone from the prayer team in the corner of the stage came up to the man ahead of her, whispered something in his ear ("...lead to reach out to you...") and they walked away together out of the line. She gulped, and her gut twisted. Something leapt inside her, desperate.

He repeated the chant in his mind, focusing, readying himself for the battle. Something was happening on the other side of the foggy veil that seemed to permeate reality now, but he ignored it, readying himself.

_I am Valkyr. There is no fear which can rule me._

Something that wasn't her.

_I am Valkyr. Courage is my soul._

She felt faint, desperate, afraid, as she stepped in front of the pastor. _Fuck_ , she swore, internally and involuntarily, it's _Jim_. He's too _nice_  for this. How did I get this far without realizing who was leading today?

"What can I pray for you for," he asked in that obnoxiously earnest-and-tender voice of his.

_I am Valkyr. St rength is my heart._

This was _not_  the time to notice that he was pretty cute, but then, that kind of thing was the whole problem.

_I am Valkyr. Honor is my breath._

_Fuck--_ again the internal profanity. She took a shuddering breath, blinked back the tears, and answered in a tiny voice, "I, there, um..."

Her voice caught, and then a mumbled fragment about "troubled night and day" fell out of her mouth.

_I am Valkyr. Compassion is my eye._

"I understand," Jim replied, sounding so frustratingly _genuine_. That was the problem, though, he'd been her youth pastor, and he _did_  understand, his testimony was all _about_ this. She'd never been so unhappy to be seen. He raised a hand toward her forehead, already starting his prayer, businesslike as ever: "Lord--"

_I am Valkyr, and I dare._

Her gut twisted and her vision went black for a moment as she staggered back. Jim's hand had _burned_ and it felt like she'd been struck by lightning that erased every shred of doubt in heaven and hell and angels and demons she'd ever had. She could _feel_  it inside her, the other life, screaming in protest at what they'd been about to do so that she could barely think. Terror pounded, and she prayed a desperate crazy careless prayer to anyone who would listen, failing at the last to trust god in her moment of need:

As he chanted the last line, all the lights went out and--

"Please, please, please help--"

\--the last thing he saw was the narrative alignment stars merging into a single figure, and the birth-guess indicator going black as the void between dreams.  


Then the world exploded.

Something hurled everything away from her like a bomb had gone off. Jim's hovering-close-in-prayer hand and the weird sense of dread that emanated from it were ripped away and and she saw him knocked off his feet like a rag-doll before mist glowing red at the bottom obscured everything. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane: she hadn't felt a thing, except a strange and suddenly-cut-off wrenching in her heart and (oh dear) between her legs.

 _A thousand shall fall at your right hand, and ten thousand at your left_ , _but it will not come near you,_ the verse ran itself inappropriately through her mind.

\--pain, madness, twisting, rending, tearing, everything black, the screaming wrongness of disembodiment, it was too late to pull back the summoning they were going seed-style and the seed wasn't getting an extraction and sweet Valkyr what had they done--

WHAM. With a dead boom like a hand slapping the pages of a huge book they were landed, bodies, gear, and all. He could practically _feel_  the field liturgists looking smug below his feet where they were bound in one of the inner sub-grams. The landing star had actually burnt itself into whatever surface they'd landed on: he could smell fire, and through the veil-mist see smoke curling up from the lines.

A short sentence she couldn't make barked out of the mist around her, and then the world exploded a second time as figures leapt out of the mist.

The human Face didn't miss a beat, vis surprisingly deep voice ringing out dramatically in the Hall: «Rise and be free. Go in defense of our-humankind's sacred dream.»

Instantly, Gryphon's limbs were free and he bounded all in one smooth motion into the first planned formation, unshipping his weapon, pushing himself quickly up on his wings to a standing position and then spreading them huge and white-feathered, to form a perimeter around the Incubator and the noncombat members. Wind from the airborne fire-team members on either side of him washed over him as they leapt straight out of bound position and into the air, weapons raised and then firing, the chemical propellants (they weren't relying on having the slightest bit of dream come with them: these devices would work as completely mechanistic slugthrowers even at the bottom of the material plane) booming painfully in the enclosed space.

 _Guns_ they have _guns_ we got bombed and now it's a shooting _fuck,_ she thought, and now actual angels are here to protect us but--she was pretty sure not all of these were angels what with the bat wings, and kind of didn't think the army of the lord would show up in what looked like glowing riot gear.

She still curled into a trembling ball, and convulsed with something else that wasn't fear. It felt like she would explode, and there was, something was, it was like she _itched_  but not to scratch, but she couldn't place the impulse in the haze of fear.

Also, although she was encircled by wings, the leathery pair across from her was making her worried.

Keeping his back to an active firefight was tough, but he knew he was covered by none other than his own beloved Eiliina standing opposite him, weapon ready, head pivoting to stay aware. Ve was so wonderfully _tall_.

_I am Valkyr. No fear can rule me._

Chatter came through the songrock, punctuated by the rapid-fire booms of chemical slug propellant as the less overwhelming Face and midwives stood and went to the Incubator and the giant psuedo-seraphim Face stood and spread ver wings:

«--delicate ceiling, just blast through--»

«There's so many, why don't they fall down?»

«--going in, clear the center please--»

«--veil tear extending into the crowd and growing up, get the last, hurry--»

And then silence: they'd dealt with the last of the perfekti. Less urgent messages through the songrock, now:

«Hall external one, clear.» 

«Hall external two, clear.» 

«I don't understand, why didn't we make a  _bigger_  tear into the crowd?» 

«Witness floor, clear.» 

«Dais rear, clear.» 

«Closeheart rituals. Not enough to actually keep anyone out but with so many together it reflected the landing crack into the ceiling.»

«Ugh. I hope none of them are incubating.»  


«Relax, I'm already down here scrying. Nothing yet.»  


Thank Sade the songrocks could work, that meant there would be enough dream in the room for an easy corporeal birth. Even so, he could feel the weight of the material plane like a mountain trying to sit on him, screaming  _you're against the rules_  in the righteous voice of Math.

 _Tell that to Limbo,_ he snarled back, inwardly.

Slowly, she realized that silence had fallen. Strange smells assaulted her nostrils: burning, something hot-smelling like fireworks, and something floral, sweet, soft, but--animal, somehow, no, not animal, _human,_ except definitively _not_  human.

A strange voice, milky-sweet and terrifying, from so far above her it must have been inside the ceiling, rang out, and she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and curled up some more.

"You have been told that there is a war in heaven, and there is, but the battle lines are not where you believe."

Much closer, a sweet and kind voice, far more human:

"It's okay, you're safe now. Please uncurl?"

She opened one eye, experimentally. Nothing bad happened, and through the mist, she could see a kind-looking, ageless face, brown-eyed, straight brown hair to her white-robed shoulders, leaning down to her level, close but not in her personal space. It didn't _look_  like a demon, not even a sneakily appealing one, so she opened her other eye, and then winced as--oh dear. That was _definitely_  an angel, up there, and it was saying end-times sounding things.

"You have been told that earnest prayer casts out demons, and it does, but there are worse things in the spiritual world than demons. From these, we have just protected you. We lay down our arms now."

That was the cue to disarm. Gryphon laid his weapon slowly at his feet, glad for once to have not fired it. He didn't like this part of the program: the Face was trying to establish rapport, but it wasn't strictly accurate. Earnest, instantiated  _intention_ severed a feeding relationship, not _prayer._ He'd argued about it in briefing, against his usually okay-with-authority character, it rankled so much, but the leads insisted it was too much to explain how things actually worked to a crowd under these circumstances.

Okay, that wasn't exactly end-times sounding. Since when did angels _or_  demons lay down their arms?

 _There was one day, a long time ago,_ quipped the part of her that seemed incapable of understanding that there was any part of life that was other than singing a worship song, or speaking inspirationally between them.

The nice lady was talking to her again.

"I know you feel wrong. We're here to help you. You prayed for help, right?"

The human Face had been paying attention, he had to admit. 

The next part would be scaly. They had to get things explained to the Incubator before the crowd-Face up there went on with ver spiel, which meant there was a ticking clock before the crowd freaked out, but the Incubator probably had no idea at all what was going on or that they were even carrying let alone in labor, and it was going to be delicate work explaining without causing a freakout, under the mythology ve would have been taught.

He wished one of the midwives would move so he could see the Incubator. Ve had looked so sad in the scry. Right now, they were crouched over ver, presumably reading for the seed's state, but obscured ver.

"Yes," she squeaked, in a tiny voice. "What's happening?"

"You're carrying a new life inside you, and it needs our help, and so do you."

There, almost, no, one rose enough to whisper to the Face, and then she--both of the midwives were femme--fiddled with her songrock and the report came over the otherwise-quiet comm-dream: «She's been in suspended labor for at least thirty signs. We're gonna need a psych assist to crack whatever's blocking.»

A pause as the midwives conferred, and then she went on:

«Also, it's a litter, twins at least.»  


Valkyr under the bed, could they come up with some more ways of making this complicated?

A new person came into Marlene's view, and whispered to the Nice Lady for a moment. She had silver skin, a fine, almost pointed nose, long white hair, and was achingly, perfectly beautiful. Some of the strange, confusing smell was coming from her in the sense-gripping way the smell came off fresh fruit. Marlene knew she wasn't being scared enough, but it was like that part of her had just given up after she opened her eyes and saw someone friendly in the middle of the madness.

She should call for Jim, or pray for god to save her, or something, but all she could think was, this person will be nice to me and knows what's happening. 

The strange silver angel went away, Nice lady smiled kindly, and talked to her more. Her voice was very soothing.

"The doctors tell me they think you've been feeling wrong for a while now, maybe about two years or so. Does that feel right?"

What a weird question, and--"I'm not pregnant."

"No, you're not pregnant. You've been incubating your dreams, and they're ready to be born now, and we think they've been waiting for about two years, and that's why you feel so wrong all the time."

Two years ago. How could they _know_? Because angels _watch_ , dummy. Two years ago, the one night, she thought she would tear in half trying to fight it off, a real proper Attack complete with haunting, maddening impure thoughts and traitorous body and everything else Jim's Wife (she had a name Marlene could never remember, and that said everything about her) had had such fun explaining to her and the other girls how to (totally not actually, as she'd discovered) deal with when it came that That Age.

Translations floated out of the songrock, coming from one of the field liturgists, saving Gryphon the frustration of not being able to see _or_  hear.

Then she absorbed what Nice Lady had actually _said,_ and replied, "What? Incubating? I thought I had a demon."

It sounded so flat and plain, saying it that way, like she had a cold. Admittedly, if you really thought about it, that was how her church treated the idea. This...wasn't a cold.

Nice lady answered immediately, and unexpectedly, by taking Marlene's hand, and then asking kindly,

"Do you feel brave?"

Marlene blinked, and then, to her own surprise, nodded. Nice Lady reached out of view, and her hand came back holding the hand of Terrifyingly Beautiful Silver Girl, who came around to where Marlene could see her. She was dressed in the same weirdly-glowing stone-body-armor outfit as the rest of them, but she was willowy and small, possibly the least threatening person Marlene had ever seen other than Nice Lady herself.  


"This is Extoa. She's one of the doctors we brought to help you. No, she's not human."

Extoa smiled a little sheepishly, as if _she_  were the one in the spotlight.

 _Finally._ He could see now, as one of the midwives moved to play prop for the Face.

The Incubator was crumpled on the floor, still half-curled, talking to them. Around her the midwives' gear was scattered, and Extoa's compatriot was busy drawing a birthing star on the floor around the three of them, unnoticed.

"What--what is she?--Are you, sorry."

If she could think about being polite _now_ , she could do anything. It sounded like a joke, but it was true.

One of the things new prey always got wrong was thinking nectar-shy humans must be disgusting, or at least less-appetizing. They weren't. They were _cute._ They _needed you_. They smelled _delicious_ , even if their souls were just a network of wounds. The one here was _adorable,_ attractive in vis way and he could only imagine what ve must taste like being thirty signs past term. Extoa must have been either made of stone, willbound, or obligate on some characteristic ve didn't have not to just jump ver.

Anyway, by the smell, Extoa only had so long before the Incubator jumped _ver._

Nice lady nodded, and Terrifyingly Beautiful Silver Girl Named Extoa answered,

"I'm a demon, but I don't want to hurt you. We're like trees, but our sunlight is humans' feelings. When a human is really lonely, or really wants it, or really needs the person it could become, sometimes they find one of our seeds in a dream and take it into their hearts, and then the seeds grow and become people like me. It's very special. I will love my Incubator forever. You did that. Inside you, not inside your body but in your soul, are at least two of my kind, and you feel wrong because it's been time for them to be born for a long time. We think they were supposed to be born about two years ago, and something stopped them."

Gryphon couldn't believe the Face was letting one of the midwives talk, couldn't believe how well Extoa was handling it, and couldn't believe the Incubator was going for this. Wasn't this religion supposed to produce a total freakout every time?

"I'm possessed."

"You're _possessing,_ really,"

Nice Lady contradicted her. Marlene was pretty sure this wasn't how this conversation was supposed to go. She considered it, two years ago as what should have been the _end,_ not the beginning. Had _she_  stopped their birth? That would be her luck. But why all the, all the--oh.

"You're succubi".

It probably said something that she'd learned the Latin plural at some point, despite being studiously anti-Catholic like any good evangelical.

Gryphon sigh inwardly. This was going to be a mess now, and the clock was ticking. He could smell the spiky energy of the crowd getting restive behind him.

The Face nodded again, and Extoa answered, still in the native language.

"Yes. There are a lot of wrong stories about us, but the one about what emotion feeds us is almost right."

Oh, blazing _obviously._  The Incubator was _curious_  and the Face had picked up on it and was prompting the midwife to play on it.

"Almost right?"

Terrifyingly Beautiful Silver Succubus Demon Girl Named Extoa replied,  


"Well, it's kind of tasteless without some love mixed in, isn't it?"

Another grating inaccuracy, but Gryphon would be the first person to agree they _really_ didn't have time for a conversation about emotional ontology.

 _That_  threw her enough--both the fact that she curious enough she was just going with this, and the statement itself--that she blurted the least useful thing anyone could have come up with in response:

"I don't get it. I'm not gay."

Nice Lady smiled again, in that sweet but totally inscrutable way, and gestured toward one of the standing figures.

 _Me what_ , Gryphon thought, but the Face was explaining.

"He's one too. They become whatever their Incubator likes best. That's why I said your dreams are waiting to be born. They're going to be _dreamy,_ and no you won't have to wait for them to grow up."

Gryphon puffed, trying to look impressively butch, when the translation came across. He'd been told this was really wonderfully unnecessary for him, but it never hurt to flex a little.

Marlene barely heard the angel speak, when it went on, because Terrifyingly Beautiful Silver Succubus Demon Girl Named Extoa was in the middle of biting her lip and Marlene already knew what she was going to say.

Apparently that had been enough to let the crowd-face go on.

"You believe this one holds within her a demon of lust, and she does, but it is not her enemy, nor yours," ve boomed.

He breathed a sigh of relief--without moving out-of-pose--and then gritted his teeth as Extoa blurted,

"Um, I think you're bi."

Had the Face approved this? _Should_  the Face have approved this? They'd been briefed with a list of things to Definitely Not Say to Any Local Unless You Were a Face and _that_  revelation was in the top three.

He was too worried to even grouch about the lost-planet identity/attraction conflation the terminology indicated.

And that brought it all crashing down, because of course Terrifyingly Beautiful Silver Succubus Demon Girl Named Extoa To Whom She Was Very Attracted was totally right, and could totally _smell_  Marlene being lustful and not just appreciative, which would be why she looked so hungry.

"Fuck."

Out loud, on purpose, no backsies, no holds barred no, heh, fucks given. If she was going to hell--and she was pretty sure if she was in this situation there was going to be no praying anything away--may as well sound like she belonged there. May as well _be_ as bad as she _felt_ all the time. But wasn't losing your faith supposed to be a lot more dramatic?

 _Than_ ** _THIS?_ ** the rest of her replied to this tiny piece that thought it was still sane.

Worry begat hypervigilance begat awareness of something going on behind him. Different energy, and voices, one of the field liturgists was talking to people conversationally. Ve wasn't translating on the commdream. Had they found other incubators?

Anyway, it was looking like Hell might be not like advertised.

"Okay, let's do this. Is it gonna hurt as much as birthing a human kid?"

Apparently the angel was playing announcer for this whole crazy thing, because in response it declaimed,

"You wish it brought out of her, and it shall be, but not against its will."  


Gryphon sputtered internally, trying to follow the emotional logic that lead to this point, and guessed the Incubator must have been waiting for this moment all along. He had spent his life making bad decisions over no decisions when the need arose. He couldn't imagine keeping the perfect stalemate of self-conflict necessary to suspend a birth for _thirty signs_. No wonder it was collapsing all at once.

At least being made example of had gotten him a nice hot moment of Gaze from the Incubator. He rolled it around his heart, absorbing slowly. Spicy, young (visible age almost twice-ripe, but tasted barely-ripe, they'd explained that followers of this religion could get arrested development sometimes but this was _nuts_ ), glowing with Sadish darkness. Ve was going to turn out _kink_ y _,_  no question.

He _almost_  grinned openly when Extoa replied to the Incubator,

"Do your orgasms usually hurt?"

Marlene actually managed to burst out laughing, for this. _Seriously?_  No, of course--and then she quieted, because she noticed the other doctor, another Terrifyingly Beautiful Girl, this one Blonde but with feathery wings, doing magic or demonic or satanic or whatever stuff around her, and the three not-angels-demons with huge wings making a sort of circle around them, blocking everyone's view, and she understood the setup.

_"Here?"_

Nice Lady had answers, and shared them.

"We can't travel with you like you are right now, and we're afraid we don't have time to make anywhere else on this planet safe. We'll make you safe, I promise."

 _On this planet????_ the tiny part of her that still was doing anything but going along with this futilely tried to ask. As if in answer anyway, the angel continued,

"We are the Transplanar Rescue Midwife Project. You called for help across the worlds, and we have come."

"Fuck."

"If you want to," Extoa quipped back, hand on the release for her armor, again seemingly out-of-turn, and Gryphon understood: this _was_  her version of jumping someone. Blazing dusty spikes, she was good. The Incubator was eating it up.

Marlene had to consider that--she'd never even quite thought about kissing a girl so far--which left her with enough mental space to say something else stupid:

"Would it help?"

Extoa didn't miss a beat, still fiddling with her armor-clasp. "Probably, but we'll want me out of the way once your dreams start incarnating."

Marlene had to _actually_ consider this, _without_  saying anything else stupid. She did, so Terrifyingly Beautiful Silver Succubus Demon Girl Named Extoa To Whom She Was Very Attracted And With Whom She Was Possibly About To Have Sex upped the ante while she was thinking:

"We could try a kiss..."

She was all blushy and cute and...shouldn't a lust-demon be a little more aggressive or something?

Gryphon humphed internally, respect for the seemingly-hapless Extoa growing. Fucking megayear-ingenues.

"Yes." Marlene sat up, readying herself before she could do any more counterproductive thinking. Extoa disappointing stopped looking like she was about to take off her top and moved in close, looking sweetly awkward-and-excited.

Sade's Clits, was Extoa a literal Ingenue? He'd heard of it, but didn't think you could have actual _permanent_  innoence like that. Didn't she learn what she was doing? Not if it made her less fun for virgin-hunters, she didn't.

Marlene surprised them both by full-on initiating with a hand behind Extoa's head bringing them together. Her smell hit first, and Marlene understood too late that it wasn't perfume. Sweet, soft flowers and early morning sunlight the color of her skin, that was what she tasted like, but her tongue read it as the taste of a food she _had to have_  and before she knew it what she'd planned as a quick experimental meeting of lips was a full on tonsil-hockey makeout.

Extoa was the most incredible kisser she had ever experienced, and yes, she was definitely, _definitely_ bi. Maybe for this she'd go all-in and become gay. She could live with that.

"Tonsil-hockey" was an insult to this, this was, this was heaven, Extoa's soft, kind lips tentatively follwing along as Marlene devoured her. She opened wider and wider as Marlene pushed to get more of her taste, and then reciprocated hungrily with a slick and very agile tongue the moment Marlene slacked off, pushing more of her taste helpfully into Marlene's mouth.

They were both breathing hard by the time Marlene had to come up for air, and she was fairly burning with lust, and, and--she gulped.

Extoa switched from looking overwhelmed (she'd overdone a lust-demon, didn't that beat all) to doctor-mode, looked at her kindly, and said,

"You can feel them ready, now."

Marlene nodded.

"Have you talked to them yet?"

"No..." She hadn't even been quite able to admit they were there. Did that make her a terrible mother? Would they like, hate her for rejecting them?

 _They?_ It finally got through that they'd been talking in plurals this whole time.

She asked, and asked. Extoa apparently knew succubus birth as well as kissing (except Marlene kind of got the impression that was talent rather than practice), and no, it would be okay, they would love her, and lots of people never knew they were Incubating until they gave birth, how could Marlene have really known with all the lies, they would understand and if they felt about her the way Extoa felt about her own Incubator they would be too busy being excited to meet Marlene for real they wouldn't care anyway no matter what.

"This is too good to be true," Marlene objected, at the end, and Nice Lady cut in,

"No, it's too good to be false. Meet them! _I_  can feel their excitement."

She was right. Marlene didn't care one little bit if _all_  of it turned out to be lie, if she got to believe in what she was being told for one single second.

"How do I do it?"

Extoa took her hand, and sat close. It was warm, and so soft, and it made her feel like all that water of love stuff might actually mean something because her touch made Marlene feel like she was overflowing, into Extoa. She wanted to just be totally wrapped in that touch.

"Close your eyes, and feel. Can you feel me? My presence? Remember what kissing me was like, and feel through that to _me._ "

Marlene closed her eyes, but of course she could feel Extoa's presence, how could she not? But she couldn't feel kissing Extoa at the moment--gonna have to do something about that in a minute--and so she focused on that, reaching into the memory, looking for this wonderful interesting new  _person_ who was its object until she was in her desperation expanding on it, feeling Extoa's soft little mouth on hers and the sense of self that came with it, and--

She opened her eyes suddenly, wide. They hadn't touched, but Extoa was grinning and blushing. That last part hadn't just been a memory or fantasy.

"So now, just do that, but look inside yourself. You'll know them, even if your fantasies have been repressed or sublimated you should have something to go on. Just reach for whatever's sexiest at the moment."

In response, Marlene reached out to cup Extoa's blushing face. Instead of pink, her color was a sort of silvery-blue, like cloud banks in twilight.

"Thanks, but I think you can imagine better."

Marlene shook her head, but she could feel it curling in her, trying to rise. The one sex dream, the one time, which had started the whole Two Years Ago thing and haunted her ever since.

She gulped, grinned, blushed herself, closed her eyes, and let the dream off its chain.

'Meet them,' Extoa had said. Kind of like 'try a kiss'. The stage was a million miles away, because where _she_  was was floating in softness, vaguely on hands and knees on something soft that didn't matter wearing something or nothing that didn't matter because she knew it looked awesome because she could feel their eyes on her as she took one of them in her mouth and the other in her--let's go all in, now--cunt.

It was a fantasy, but they were so achingly familiar. They even tasted familiar, felt familiar, and perfect, and as she sucked the one demandingly and goaded the other into action with her hips so that she got hammered between them with every synchronized thrust, smacking into her, lust rising--

She screamed out loud as she came, right there on the stage, in front of everyone, bucking. At some point she'd flipped her real body onto hands and knees to match her posture in the fantasy, and nearly fell, but in the fantasy she felt kind strong hands clap onto her hips and cradle her head gently and this somehow steadied her as the orgasm ripped through her like a tornado, heart-rending, world-ending, beautiful, she was dying but what a way to die there wasn't anything little about _this_ death...

It had taken her this way two years ago, too, lying in her bed, she'd found herself on hands and knees, mouth open, coming, and she'd some how _stopped_  it, halted the orgasm and packed it all away like she was supposed to and as it tore through her now so that she _couldn't even_ scream she realized it had been waiting for her, poised, knocking at the doors of her heart--behold I stand at the door and _knock_  she thought as she drove her hips against the latest thrust-- _all this time._  No wonder she was always horny, she'd been on the edge for _two years_.

Something was warm inside her hips, and tasted heartbreaking in her mouth, and those hands were pressing the three of them together, and, oh, right, _they_  were coming too.

She hadn't imagined herself as swallower, but having coffee-chocolate flavored jizz would get you _everywhere_  in that department. Good thing you couldn't get pregnant off a fantasy and also gosh no Jesus this had gotten vivid and detailed. She even remembered to imagine burning lungs because she'd been deep-throating for like fifty awesome years or however long it had been. Actually it was getting distracting and she was done coming enough to breathe with her real body to remind herself that you couldn't run out of air in a fantasy--oh.

_Oh._

Slowly, she pulled herself off the most beautiful cock she had ever felt, and pulled the other most beautiful cock she had ever tasted out of her mouth, and shakily got to her feet climbing up past washboard abs, perfect just-tastefully-sculpted pecs, to look into the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen. He was perfect. He was amazing. There really was nothing else to call him but a dream.

Dimly, around her, she got an impression of Extoa and Nice Lady looking on congratulatorily, but that was the least important thing in the universe right now and so was everything else that wasn't these two new friends of hers.

"I love you," she said, and he smiled back and Extoa was right she _could_  imagine better and _here he was_  and then he was saying "I love you too, Marlene," in this awesome purring bass voice and she was gasping because she had spots in her eyes because she'd forgotten to breathe so she did breathe as she whirled around sliding her naked body (when did that happen who cared) between their two perfectly and identically sculpted ones to kiss the other one full on the lips and say she loved him too. Four hands on her, one of her arms around the one she was facing and the other scrabbling back to embrace the other and pull them all together so she could get sandwiched between them and move against their slick, hard cocks. She could feel the question in their motions, and see it on the face of the one in front of her, and answered as appropriately as she could think of: "Fuck yes, hurry up."

"I don't want to hurt you," said the one behind her.

"Then be gentle," she replied, and pushed her hips against him, causing the other to grab them and pull all three of them together.

As they carefully lifted her and positioned themselves, as strong as mountains and as gentle as Extoa's kisses, she caught a snatch of voices from beyond the wall of wings, and giggled. Someone was doing the world's craziest altar call:

"--give birth to your dreams. You--"

"Show them, show them!" She shouted out, laughing, as Heaven and Earth entered and took her and thereby earned their names, and she saw Nice Lady grin, and say something in the language they spoke, but the wings stayed in place, and she understood why.

Fine then. She would do her own showing. Worship Leader was off her resume forever, but even so, there were some things she had to share, and anyway didn't the devil have all the good music? _This_  conversion was going to leave her quite the testimony to give.

_He who has ears, let him hear, and rock out._

As she dropped this line of thought to focus on what was _really_ important, she could hear the altar caller finishing his spiel:

"There is a choice you must make, and something you will have to do. Do not be afraid."


End file.
